This reminds me of a saying from the 1970's 1980's recession of repeated layoffs: " When my neighbor (or the guy working next to me) gets laid off, that's too bad. When I get laid off, THAT"S A DISASTER!"
The company I worked for at the time saw it's highest labor efficiency from keeping engineering, machining and assembly all working 55 hours per week (5 ten hour days and five hours Saturday morning. When business slowed, the company did not permanently cut back to 40 hour weeks to keep people employed. We would have a temporary two week slow down to 40 hours, have around a 10 percent layoff, and two week later go back to 55 hours per week. That policy was good for the surviving employees, but a disaster for those put out of work.
Is a similar thing happening in farming? The industry continually pushes to increase efficiency, which leads to overproduction and falling prices. For the most part, this leads to the more efficient producers expanding their production to maintain their income and the less efficient producers dropping out of the business. It's a boon to the surviving farms and a disaster for those pushed out of business.
Is increasing efficiency and over production the root cause of farm consolidation?
Some of the remedies that have been tried in the past: Increase exports through "dumping" production abroad at discounted prices; Quotas; Spend taxpayer money to pay farmers to take land out of production; Force consumers to consume excess production such as fructose corn syrup and ethanol; Farmer's unions; Dump excess production into the ocean.
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Today's Featured Article - The 8N and the Fox - by Zane Sherman. Dec. 13 1998, Renfroe, Alabama. Last niht I dreamed about the day that I plowed the field of about 10 acres over on what Jimmy and Dandy called the Ledbetter field. I was driving the 1948 8N Ford tractor that Jimmy bought in 48 new This was prebably in about 1951 and maybe even befor the house was built. This would have made me to be about16 years old and I drove the tractor for nothing and would have paid to drive it if I had had any money which I didn't, but neit
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